2014.06.02 18:47
2 June
Lotus International 22
GA Document 7
El Croqius 67
add much fuel to "Did deconstruction turn into blobitecture some time in the 90s?"
2014.07.31 10:23
Book Review: "The City in the City—Berlin: A Green Archipelago. A manifesto"
"The unquestioned, mainstream content of other contributors including Leon Krier, Manuel de Solà-Morales, Josef-Paul Kleihues, James Stirling, and Rob Krier, were praising ‘urbanity’ but actually plotted its erasure: all for the sake of formal exercises of dubious merit with respect to the needs of the city at the time."
--Karen Lohrmann
What exactly in the evidence that these contributors plotted 'urbanity's' erasure? I've owned Lotus International 19 since 1978 (the first Lotus I ever bought, while still a student), and it never occurred to me that the projects presented where indeed the opposite of what they intended. It sounds to me as if Lohrmann took a ride on some strange historical ellipsis.
2014.09.12 13:54
How to read like an architect.
I'm currently in the process of taking apart a 1823 edition of Durand's Précis des Leçons d’Architecture. It's never easy taking apart a book (literally and emotionally), but I'm doing it this time to optimally scan all the engravings.
When I'm done with the scanning, I could sell the engravings individually at eBay (and make back maybe 5 times the amount I paid for the book), yet I'll probably just keep it all and rearrange it with other (taken apart) books to create strange and new architecture books.
I never counted all my books, but it's a lot, kind of too much. What's weird now is what books I have more than one of:
SMLXL
Architectural Theory
Out of the Ordinary (one from the Free Library for 25 cents)
Adjusting Foundations
Pewter Wings, Golden Horns, Stone Veils
Lotus 19
Lotus 22
Letarouilly (two 1980s, one 1910s)
Buhlmann's Classic and Renaissance Architecture
Schinkel's Collection of Architectural Designs (both 1981 folio box edition size)
El Croquis MDRDV 1991-2002
Le Corbusier's Oeuvre Complete vol. 1
Le Corbusier's Oeuvre Complete vol. 8
Norberg-Schulz's Baroque Architecture (big)
Tafuri and De Feo's Modern Architecture/2 (small)
Architecture and Utopia
If I took apart all those 'extra' books and then rearrange them, that would be quite a new library of architecture books.
I used to have two of Durand's Recueil et Parallèle des Édifices de tout genre, Anciens et Modernes, but I sold the 1982(?) reprint edition once I acquired an expanded 3 volume 1826 Italian edition.
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2014.09.12 18:11
How to read like an architect.
The last architecture books I received (last week) were Abstract 2010/2011 and Abstract 2012/2013, Columbia University's year Architecture/Planning/Preservation school yearly review. I've only looked through them once so far, and I wasn't particularly impressed by the work--it all seems somewhat dated (like from 2000-2001) and for the most part over-articulated. I'll look again and perhaps I'll gleam more from it all. I ordered the books mostly for the over 700 pages each (at a relatively cheap price) thinking I'd then see lots of architectural ideas I hadn't seen before. Sadly, it didn't work out that way.
2014.09.12 19:25
How to read like an architect.
I'm finally getting around to doing something I thought about over seven years ago:
2007.07.03 16:44: Just got a 1823 edition of Durand's Précis des leçons d'architecture this past Saturday, and seeing it now next to Hejduk's books inspires a comparative reenactionary analysis.
I think there are all kinds of forms of reading, even to the point of literally taking a book apart is a form of reading (because you learn some things about the book that you wouldn't learn otherwise, and you start noticing compositional issues that also wouldn't be noticed otherwise).
In 'regular' reading I use small post-it notes as bookmarks, and thus lots of my books have multiple small post-it notes sticking out of them.
I used to use very old (like 1995) text scanning software, but, now, with my new medium/large flat scanner, I'm amazed at how good text now translates into digital format. In using digital text, you go through a second close reading of the text, and, in reworking the text into html (for example), the book comes alive in a way that wasn't there before. I'm still in the process of reworking Vincent Scully's Louis I. Kahn (1962), and it's a real pleasure and learning experience having the images along side the text (instead of all the images at the back of the book. --4076b-4076e (so far).
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2015.02.25
articles of note
Elizabeth B. MacDougall, "Michelangelo and the Porta Pia" (JSAH October 1960).
Kurt W. Forster & Richard J. Tuttle "The Palazzo del Te" (JSAH December 1971).
Spiro Kostof, review of Principles of Architectural History: The Four Phases of Architectural Style 1420-1900 (JSAH December 1971).
Gregory T. Armstrong, "Constantine's Churches: Symbol and Structure" (JSAH March 1974).
Debrorah Howard, "Four Centuries of Literature o Palladio" (JSAH October 1980).
Jules David Prown, "On Being a Client" (JSAH March 1983).
David Cast, "Seeing Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor" (JSAH December 1984).
Alan Hess, "The Origins of McDonald's Golden Arches" (JSAH March 1986).
Alberto Perez-Gomez, review of J.N.L. Durand 1760-1834, De l'imitation a la norme (JSAH December 1986).
William E. Wallace, "Dal disegno allo spazio": Michelangelo's Drawings for the Fortifications of Florence (JSAH June 1987).
Damie Stillman, "British Architects and Italian Architectural Competitions, 1758-1780" (JSAH March 1973).
Allen Greenberg, "Lutyen's Cenotaph" (JSAH March 1989).
Frank McCormick, "John Vanbrugh's Architecture: Some Sources of His Style" (JSAH June 1987).
Robert Ousterhout, "Rebuilding the Temple: Cpnstantine Monomachus and the Holy Sepulchre" (JSAH March 1989).
Martin Bressani, "Notes on Viollet-le-Duc's Philosophy of Architecture: Dialectics and Technology" (JSAH December 1989).
William C. Loerke, "A Rereading of the Interior Elevation of Hadrian's Rotunda" (JSAH March 1990).
Joan E. Barclay Lloyd, review of alt-St. Peter in Geschichte und Wissenshaft (JSAH October 1960).
David B. Brownlee, review of The Louis I. Kahn Archive Personal Drawings: The Completely Illustrated Catalogue of the Drawings in the Louis I. Kahn Collection (JSAH June 1990).
Frank Salmon, "The Site of Michelangelo's Laurentian Library" (JSAH December 1990).
Tod Marder, "Alexander VII, Bernini, and the Urban Setting of the Pantheon in the Seventeenth Century" (JSAH September 1991).
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